(Closed) Narrowing down the “List”

Just curious how you ladies narrowed down the list? We are doing a 100 guest list wedding (not including kids). Everyone that is invited knows one another and we are very close. So it’s not one of those big wedding a 100 guest list is actually a close nit wedding -personal for us. So just curious how you narrowed down your list? Right now we have about 120 we need to take out 20 people!! eek! :/ ::Sad face::

This is so difficult, I completely relate! We aren’t getting married until November, and we started our guest list in January. We began by putting everyone we could think of down on a spreadsheet. Then we narrowed it down from there, we started by listing bridal party members and their dates at the top, followed by family members (essential family members not distant relatives), then close friends. We kept going until we hit our max invite number. Every month we look at the list again and have been able to take a couple of more names off. The more we think about it, the less guilty we feel about not inviting say, college friends that we don’t speak with very often.

We are lucky that we have some time before the Save-The-Date Cards need to go out (we’ve only sent an email to close family and friends who we know will need to book a flight) so we have the luxury of cleaning up our list alot. 🙂

It gets easier, it really does. If you are having Out of Town guests then there is that possibility of them not coming and you will probably know know which ones will be able to make the trip. Now for the ones who live in your area…well the ones you speak less and less to could be the ones who you can take off the list. You can even consider which people you are the closest to. I’m sure you are close to your guests but there are some ppl that you are far more closer and cutting them off the list is not an option.

I made my list of family and personal friends (with any +1s), Fiance made his list of family and personal friends (with any +1s), and then we made a list of mutual friends, including +1s. We right-off-the-bat included only people we see (or, in the case of out-of-state family, speak to monthly).

I will admit that when we had planned 50 guests, we never thought we’d exceed it and we did…to 98. Because we did not want to exclude the people on our list, we actually changed our meal plan to better accomodate more people and our budget. It worked for us.

But, like it’s been said, if you have out-of-town people, they may not come, but you simply cannot reply on that theory. I have uncles and aunts who have never come down to visit in over 10-years, even with my parents’ failing health, but they’re making the trip for the wedding.

I have no idea if this helped or not. Are you cutting down your list due to your budget? If so, is there a way to stretch your budget in one area to allow for those 20 extra people, and cut back on another area of your budget?

Thank you my bees 🙂 I love gettting other ways to narrow down the list. It will be very hard becasue we actually are really close with everyone that is invited so we don’t have the whole “ones we’re not close close with” which sucks. We will figure it out. We have to finalize the list tomorrow so it will be a tuffy although ones we don’t choose are on the B list so in case we have the ones that can’t make it. 🙂 To answer you question BetterSherm yes we have to cut down the list due to $$ we actually don’t have a budget lol its the fact that my dad and mom are paying for the wedding and its $80 a person not to mention my dad is a jew! 🙂 so he is very very frugual when it comes down to the “list” but I think I will be able to convince him 🙂 I am the only child so my mom is trying to throw that lol but It will work out :)) I just care about seeing my Fiance at the altar and say “I DO” the list isn’t a big part of the day as long as my parents are there and his mommy. 🙂

But again thank you all for some more ideas I can throw into our narrowing down the list. Sorry this is so long. Got too carried away. 🙂